


Shutter Speed

by hannah_baker



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 08:55:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannah_baker/pseuds/hannah_baker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is frustrated with the fact that he doesn't have a half-decent photo of Derek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shutter Speed

Derek woke naturally to the emptiness in his arms. The sheets next to him were warm, but Stiles was gone. Derek’s sleep addled brain was immediately frustrated. He let out a little sound between a whimper and a growl, and heard Stiles laugh from down the hall.  
  
“I’m in here,” he said from the bathroom, voice awake but a little distressed. Derek didn’t want to get out of bed, but there was no way he could sleep if there was the possibility of Stiles being unhappy. He dragged his feet down the hall and into the bathroom.  
  
Stiles was sitting on the counter, his phone in his hand. Derek’s room was woefully lacking outlets, so when Stiles stayed over he had to charge his phone in here. He spread his legs so Derek could move between them, pulling them close at Stiles' waist and letting Stiles’ head rest on his shoulder. He was still pleasantly bed-warm, remembering the sheets as they had remembered him.  
  
“What’s wrong, love?” Derek asked, a large yawn following his question. _Love_ was the only term of endearment Derek ever, ever used, and he used it sparingly. More freely when tired.  
  
“Stressed out. Can’t sleep,” Stiles answered, putting down his phone finally to wrap his arms around Derek.  
  
“Stressed about school?” Derek asked. Stiles was home on fall reading break, a four day weekend toward the end of October before midterms. His sophomore year was turning out to be a lot more work than his freshman year had been. His professors at Davis were laying it on thick.  
  
“Yeah,” Stiles said. “And Scott.”  
  
“What’s wrong with Scott?” Derek asked. Scott was at school at UC Riverside with Isaac, studying bio. Derek hadn’t heard anything about Scott.  
  
Stiles shrugged. “Just acting weird,” he said.  
  
“Isaac’s down at Riverside with him, he’ll be okay,” Derek said. Pack mattered. Everyone went to college paired off. Boyd and Lydia. Isaac and Scott. Stiles and... well, Derek visited him every weekend. ‘He’s with Isaac’ was enough to quell any worries that Derek had. Stiles seemed a little comforted by that, but Derek could tell something else was bugging him. “What else?”  
  
“I uh,” Stiles started, a little guilt in his voice. Derek could tell this was what was actually bothering him. “I found a folder on your phone,” he said. “Made me jealous.”  
  
Derek’s brow furrowed. “Folder on my phone?” Derek wasn’t a porn-saving kind of guy, and it’s not like he could get in trouble for that anyway. Stiles had almost a whole hard drive full himself. He couldn’t think of what it could be.  
  
“The folder of all of those pictures of me,” he said, his voice soft. _Oh, that folder_ , Derek thought.  
  
“You’re jealous?” Derek asked, confused.  
  
“There’s like, nine hundred photos of me in there,” Stiles explained. Derek knew. He knew every one. Stiles’ face calmed him down when he was upset or couldn’t sleep. He ached for the day Stiles could spend every night in his bed, instead of just breaks.  
  
“And I love every one of those photos,” Derek said, trying to drag a little more information out of his boyfriend.  
  
“Yeah, and I have like, four of you. In one you have your eyes closed, one is the back of your head, and two have those annoying wolf eye sun spot things.” It was three in the morning and Stiles wanted photos. Derek didn’t think he would ever understand how the last few minutes of conversation had been strung together in Stiles’ head. Maybe it would have made more sense if he was more awake. He doubted it.  
  
“So let’s take some photos,” Derek said, grabbing Stiles’ phone from the counter and pulling him by the hand to slide back to the floor. Derek flipped Stiles so he was facing the mirror and wrapped his arms around him, hooking his chin over Stiles’ shoulder while he opened the camera app on Stiles’ phone.  
  
“Look at the lens,” Derek instructed, tucking his face behind Stiles’ ear and pressing a kiss to the tender skin there as he hit the shutter button. He showed the photo to Stiles. He hadn’t looked at the lens; he’d looked at Derek. His face was sweet and sleepy, affectionate. Derek would text it to his own phone later. “Approve?”  
  
“Your eyes are still closed,” Stiles said, sighing. Derek took the phone back and pulled Stiles to face him, taking another picture in the mirror as their lips met.  
  
“This one?” Derek asked, holding up the phone for approval again.  
  
“Now neither of us have eyes,” Stiles said. “Your abs look good though,” he said, running his fingers down Derek’s bare stomach.  
  
“Oh,” Derek said, a thought just coming to him. “Hold on,” he said, heading back to his room and digging in the back of his closet a little. He came back into the bathroom with an old Nikon DSLR. It was entry level and still had the stock lens on it, but Laura had wanted it for a reason.  
  
“This,” he told Stiles, whose ass was back up on the counter, back against the mirror. “Is Laura’s old camera.” He smiled at the memory of it in her hands. He had a lot more of her old stuff in his closet. He should finally dig through her computer for some of the photos she took.  
  
“And it can magically take pictures of werewolf eyes or something?” Stiles asked, one eyebrow arched. He ran one of his hands through the disheveled mop of hair on his head, and Derek’s heart melted a little. He hated what sleep did to him. Made him all mushy.  
  
“Not by magic. There’s a filter on the lens,” he explained, screwing the thin piece of glass off the front of the lens to show it to Stiles before replacing it. “It’s a pretty standard UV filter. Nothing out of the ordinary. No one would otherwise question it. But yes, it can photograph wolf eyes.”  
  
Derek felt pretty pleased with himself as he flipped the camera on, switched the controls to auto and handed the camera to Stiles.  
  
Stiles took it, heavy in his hands and much, much larger than the point-and-shoot he’d gotten for his seventeenth birthday which had been gathering dust since he’d gotten his new phone.  
  
He brought the chunky camera up to his face, adjusting the zoom to fit Derek in the frame. He could only get his chest and head in at this close of a distance, but he framed him square and straightforward, and hit the shutter button.  
  
Stiles flipped the camera down to check his photo out and gasped. The photo that appeared on the small LCD screen on the back of the camera was Derek - just Derek, no wolf spots. He’d even smiled a little for Stiles. Not the big, tooth-filled situation that had caught Sitles off guard when he’d first seen it, just a little soft turn up of the corners of his mouth.  
  
“Oh my god,” Stiles said, immediately pulling the camera back to his face and shooting another five shots in quick succession. Derek made a bit of a move in vain to grab the camera back from Stiles, but Stiles was quicker. He stretched his legs out from his seat on the bathroom counter and pressed the soles of his feet to Derek’s stomach playfully, pinning Derek back against the wall of the small room. Derek let him. Derek stood there and let Stiles take picture after picture for long minutes.  
  
Soon, Stiles had exhausted the angle and zoom options of his position and flicked through the photos he’d already taken on the LCD screen. Derek took his chance to swipe the camera from Stiles’ hands quickly.  
  
“Hey!” Stiles said, his immediate response the deepest pout his face was capable of. It was the level of pout that could get Derek to do _anything_ for him.  
  
“C’mere,” Derek said, and Stiles got off the counter once again. Derek flipped him around again, pressing his chest tight to Stiles’ back, one muscled arm locking around Stiles’ shoulders. He flipped a switch on the camera so he could see the photo he was setting up on the small screen and aimed it at the mirror. He pressed his cheek flush to Stiles’ and hit the shutter.  
  
“This one?” Derek asked, handing the camera back to Stiles.   
  
“This one,” Stiles confirmed, hands holding the camera reverently.  
  
“You can keep it, you know,” Derek told him, kissing the soft edge of his hairline at his temple. Stiles smiled even wider at that.  
  
“I’ll put it on my computer in the morning,” he said, thinking Derek was talking just about the photo.  
  
“I mean the camera. You can keep the camera.”  
  
“No I can’t,” Stiles said, as though Derek had said something deeply nonsensical. “It was Laura’s. And it’s expensive.”  
  
“I saved up for it tending bar at a total dive when we were in New York. I promise you it wasn’t expensive. And yeah, it was Laura’s. But it’s not the last remaining vestige of her former life or anything. I have plenty of sentimental crap of hers to hold onto. She’d like to know someone was shooting with it. She’d have liked you, you know,” Derek said, the last part just a whisper into Stiles’ hair. “Would have liked for it to be you with her camera.”  
  
“Are you sure?” Stiles asked.  
  
“Of course. Keep it. Take pictures of the pack - there aren’t any of us together. Take pictures at school for your dad. Take pictures of us.” Derek wasn’t very good at people. He frightened cashiers and had sent more than one waitress crying into the kitchen. It wasn’t his fault. There was just a communication barrier that he couldn’t break through with most people. Stiles was different. Derek was good at Stiles.  
  
“Thank you,” Stiles said softly, turning the camera in his hands, ghosting fingers over an array of mysterious buttons. He put the lens cap back on.  
  
“Can you sleep now?” Derek asked, praying for the answer to be yes. “There are only so many more hours for you to spend in my bed before you have to go back to school.” Derek did not like that Stiles was an hour and a half away from him. It was completely reasonable from a college perspective, but an hour and a half away was decidedly not _in my bed_ \- Derek’s preferred location for his boy.  
  
“I can sleep,” Stiles said, leading Derek back out of the bathroom and into Derek’s bedroom. Derek watched as Stiles carefully set the camera down on his side table before climbing back under the covers and lifting them up for Derek to slide in next to him.  
  
“You can get some homework done tomorrow if that will make you feel better,” Derek said into Stiles’ hair when the had gotten settled against each other. It would be Friday when they woke up, three whole days of reading break remaining ahead of them.  
  
“Tomorrow afternoon will be a photoshoot that lasts until the battery dies or the memory card fills up. Then to a one hour photo for prints,” Stiles said. “No time for Philosophy readings.”  
  
For all of Derek’s exhaustion, he made himself stay awake until he was sure Stiles had fallen asleep again, his face smoothing out, free of worry in his unconsciousness. He liked knowing that the look on Stiles’ face was his fault. He liked being good at something again.  
 **  
**

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://hannahisawolf.tumblr.com), just so yanno.


End file.
